Boy Expelled From Special-Needs School After Pointing Rolled-Up Paper "Gun" at Classmates: Report

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An 8-year-old boy was expelled from his special-needs Manhattan school after he pointed a paper "gun" at his classmates, according to a published report.

The student at the Lang School in Battery Park City made the gun out of rolled-up paper, apparently after discussing military weapons with his dad, who served in the military during the Kuwait war, his mother told the New York Post.

The school said the boy pointed the gun at other students, and in a separate incident, said he'd kill a girl.

The boy's mother, Melina Spadone, told the Post he stopped pointing the gun when his teachers asked him to, and that her son's threat to "kill" came from a typical argument between kids and that it didn't mean anything.

Spadone, of Hell's Kitchen, says the private school is supposed to help kids like her son, who has been diagnosed with ADHD. She and her husband, who are finalizing their divorce, paid $119,500 in tuition and other costs for five months before the school told them their son would not be allowed to return, the Post says.

In a June 12 email obtained by the Post, the school's principal wrote to the boy's teachers and psychologist that he "had a concrete plan for killing [a female student] that he would not retract after discussion with our psych staff … that he was physically and verbally aggressive at a whole new level only last week … He might well present a risk to the emotional and possibly (though remotely so) physical safety and well-being of his classmates.’"

The principal, Micaela Bracamonte, went on to recommend that the boy, Asher Palmer, be home-schooled next year and that he return to the school after that.

Spadone is angered by the suggestion.

"Asher is exactly the type of student Lang is supposed to be serving," she told the Post. "Why they did this doesn't make sense."

Spadone said her son enjoyed school, and Asher told the paper: "I like being with my friends."